Wireless Watering System - LinkTap

Hi Dan,

I’m looking for some community feedback on the functionality of this LinkTap integration as per below request. Though I would reach out directly to you as an active user and obviously a satisfied customer. Are you able to help me out with this query?

Thanks in advance
Steve

Hi Steve.
I wrote a local HTTP API integraton for linktap.

This does actually supply a service that can pause a tap. And from my testing the pausing does work, you just dont see that pause status sync with the mobile app (an annoying quirk of Linktap local control regardless of functionality)

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Thanks very much Dan for responding and of course for the HTTP API integration,

I just checked out your GitHub read_me for this integration and it looks excellent. Just what I am looking for. I don’t have any need for scheduling via Home Assistant as I plan to just do this via the native app. What I do want Home Assistant control over however is to ‘pause’ the schedule if my rain gauge or soil moisture sensors determine that watering is not currently required. Yet to write rules for this ‘pause’ request but plan to use Node Red for this.

So you would recommend this over the MQTT integration option for my use case?

You cant pause a tap using the home assistant mqtt integration.

Theres a more complicated “advanced” mqtt implementation but unless you have a good understanding of mqtt and how to implement mqtt entities in HA manually I wouldn’t recommend it.

So yes i think the http integration in your case would make sense as it gives you this functionality.

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Thanks so much for this integration, Dan! Excellent job! I have a doubt: is it possible to add the Linktap water consumption to the home assistant Energy panel?

Im not sure. Multiple waters on a single day may mess with the stats.

For those playing at home, I have just added valve entities introduced by 2024.1.x.

They are a simple wrapper for the switch, and are functionally equivalent. It works in the same way setting the switch to a valve would in the UI.

0.4.2 adds what needs to be added in order for it to be added.
Whether it works as expected – im not sure but theres only one way to find out :slight_smile:

Thank you so much for this update! I will test it in the coming days!

I got some water entries on my dashboard for yesterday. Im not quite sure whats going to happen with subsequent water, or how long linktap keeps the data for as they reset to 0 at some point. I will keep an eye on it, but only 1 of my 4 devices tracks volume.

Update: water consumption graphs are “working”, but when the volume entities reset from the actual volume to 0 (im not sure exactly how often they do this) it creates a watering volume of the negative value.

Not quite sure how to handle this one, will do some reading.

Edit: I think the best way to handle this one is to create a utility meter helper, and add that to the dashboard.
Anything else ive tried to do in the component just ends up bringing in negative values, or you get no values reported at all when it resets to 0.

I may end up attempting to create the same thing in the component itself, but for the moment that will work.

The water consumption values via the energy dashboard appear to be working now. I had to add some black magic with a last_reset date as the way linktap presents the data is a little odd.

Hello Dan
My first post. Firstly Thanks for the great work you are doing on this integration - Its greatly appreciated and working well for me. I’m months into HA journey (so still learning a lot) however I have a few questions / observations by way of feedback please:
Q: The LinkTap valve Open / Closed sensor for me is detecting open or closed correctly BUT the associated sensor valve icon shows Reverse to actual ie it shows closed when open and visa versa? is there something I can to do to rectify this please?
Q: The Linktap binary_sensor ‘…is paused’ is showing as ‘unknown’ . Is this sensor supposed to be active and or can it be used?
Q: Not a problem but what is the sensor ‘…plan_sn’ please ? - I notice in sensor history it changes in value when Lintap being used for watering but not clear to me what it is reporting and I’m guessing ‘sn’ is not serial number as I first assumed?
Q: from Sensor ‘…plan_mode’ - is there a list of these Watering Plans are please? mine for example shows ‘3 mode’ right now but is not clear what this is to me.
Is there any example code someone could share to enable me set the following please:

  • Failsafe Duration
  • Water Volume Limit
    Q: is sensor ‘…watering_volume’ a historical record or a user setting - I ask because unlike most others sensors this one by default presents a user variable slide setting (in my case from 5-120litres) what exactly is this user setting for please?
    Many thanks

Q: The LinkTap valve Open / Closed sensor:

Can you please provide an example ? I havent noticed this, but to be honest i generally use the switch and not the valve, but they have always been in sync in all of my testing, and are in sync currently.

Q: The Linktap binary_sensor ‘…is paused’ is showing as ‘unknown’
This is pending some changes from Linktap. They said to me that was coming ages ago but hasnt made it into production yet.
Ignore it for the moment

Q: plan_sn – this is some data that come from the API, its the plan you have setup for that particular tap in the mobile app
same with plan_mode – there is actually a plan mode name sensor that translates them for you. Off the top of my head i think its called xxx_plan_mode_string.

I made a technical decision to now allow setting of schedules etc in the integration, as there are a myriad of options for irrigation control in HA, or use the mobile app – so it just doesnt really make sense.

Water volume limit / watering by volume is not yet supported by linktap. Its coming at some point, so you can ignore those numbers at the moment.
Its designed to work the same as duration - ie water until 100L has been delivered, and then turn off.

The whole reason this integration came about was because fail safe duration was flakey. It works in a similar way to the mobile app, where you say water for x minutes. x minutes is set by the number entity.
That tells your tap to turn on for x minutes, as opposed to using a script or an automation that turns it on, delays for x, and then turns it off again.

Failsafe duration isnt needed if using this integration, as each turn_on does that for you, for that specific turn_on

Hi Dan
Thanks for that cleared up pretty much all I was asking.
On the valve display question - I’ve attached a screenshot to show what caused me to ask - its possible with hindsight I’ve just mis-understood the images (but that’s the point of a user interface) - the value shows both the closed and open icons on the right - one is bright and and is dull. you may have no control over this but I assumed bright on is ‘active’ (and so inverted - as valve is closed in this screenshot)

Both the switch and the valve are closed.

The icon on the left is closed, and the right one is open. If you open the entity itself, you will see it says closed.
The valve icons are not immediately obvious, but think of water running on the x axis (ie horizonaly) … the valve is cutting that flow of water.

Heres one of mine:
image

Looking at the labels for the mdi icons for those, they look the wrong way round, looks to me to be a vertical pipe with a valve inside ?

image

image

EDIT: actually it is right I think, the right hand (greyed out) is the current state, ie closed and the left hand side one is to press to open the valve

Yeah, you are right.

The greyed out one is the current state. I never thought about it that way but it makes much more sense! You click on the icon to activate that state!

Hi there - I am new to home assistant and linktap. I want to be able to turn a tap on and off through python on a raspberry pi. Crucially, this needs to be on a local network as I don’t have a connection to the internet.

I saw that @sh00t2kill has written “… a local HTTP API integraton for linktap.” I just want to confirm that this is what I need before I buy $200 worth of gear. If I understand correctly, I wouldn’t need home assistant installed either?

Thanks to the community, and thanks to DanW.

The integration wint work without home assistant, but you could adapt it or just use the base class with your own implementation.

I believe that you need internet to do initial configuration.

That is perfect for my needs. Thanks for making it possible - much appreciated:)